There are some days when I wish that I smoked cigarettes. Because the level of scorn I have is simply not complete without the prop of a smoking cancer stick that I could use to jab into the air as I made my misanthropic speeches about my job.
Yeah. It’s my job again. What a stress baby. Actually my job apparently took fertility pills so that it didn’t have just one stress baby. No. It has septuplet stress babies and is on the cover of Newsweek with chipped front teeth, begging for charity Pampers. I think my eyebrows have fused together in the middle of my forehead. My stress crevice wrinkle has become a faultline and I fear the tectonic plates may shift and move and my ear will be where my nose should be.
(There was a big tirade about my job and specifics that I realized probably totally broke the confidentiality agreement that I signed at some point, so I deleted it, but it was funny. Really. Very possibly the funniest thing I ever wrote. You snooze, you lose. Ok, it wasn’t really that funny. I’m just trying to make you feel bad. Because I’m cranky.)
When I was driving around for lunch today, I was thinking about how I wish I were a stay-at-home mom. Except that I don’t have children. Well, I do have one, but honestly, I wouldn’t have much to do while he’s at work. And then I stopped at the mall to see if they had another pair of DKNY sunglasses on sale (they didn’t) and then got all giddy when the muzak played Debbie Gibson’s ‘Out of the Blue’. Such a peppy song, that. The late 80’s were such a carefree time. You just had to perm your hair and then maybe spray it with Sun-In or something (which I did exactly once, and you know you did too, so don’t be giving me those looks) and then wear a Scrunchy that matched your socks, which were pulled up over your pegged pants. Or rather, one of the layers of your socks. I’m not sure what we were going for there. I almost think that maybe we were showing our financial superiority, in that we had so many coordinating articles of clothing that we had to wear many of them AT THE SAME TIME. I seem to remember friends doing that with Polo shirts too. In retrospect, it reminds me of those tribes that put the rings around women’s necks. People can convince themselves that anything is a good idea. Evidence the fact that Taco Bell continually charges various prices for the same seven ingredients in varying combinations.
And then I almost had a breakdown when the muzak started playing ‘Wildfire’. You know, the song about the horse? Dude, that was like my FAVORITE song in 1980. I used to request it at rollerskating all the time. I was nine and I had owned my own horse. Don’t judge me.
So, you know how the heroine of the song died? In a killing frost? Do you know what a killing frost is? It’s the first time in autumn that it gets cold enough to kill your flowers. That’s it. Like’ thirty degrees maybe. Michael Martin Murphey makes it sound like she’s battling these arctic winds and has tears freezing to her cheeks as she bravely rides on into the Nebraska’ I don’t know’ moors? Do they have moors there? Anyway, bah. It was just a bit nippy. But then suddenly there was a blizzard. So it wasn’t a killing frost? Which was it, Michael Martin Murphey? Make up your damn mind. And if the horse and then the girl were dumb enough to go running out in the blizzard, then it sounds like Darwinism in practice, non?
See, this is where I would take a deep drag of the cigarette, fix my eye upon him with deep contempt and then exhale dramatically.
Except I wouldn’t. Because smoking is bad, kids. Don’t smoke. It’s smelly and stinky and gives you skanky teeth. I’m just ruined in the head because every strong woman in my family smokes and has always smoked and being cranky just doesn’t seem right without a little nicotine buzz.
I had somewhere to go with this. I swear I did.
Gah.
Patsy Cline called me an angel in an email today.
Pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain.
